According to NBC Health's Troy Jones, who operates the website Nukepills, the demand for potassium iodide jumped last week after President Trump tweeted that he had a “much bigger & more powerful” nuclear button than North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un.

North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the “Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.” Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!

“On Jan. 2, I basically got in a month’s supply of potassium iodide and I sold out in 48 hours,” said Jones, 53, who is a domestic and international distributor of emergency radiation products.

In the 48-hour period from Trump’s “nuclear button” tweet, Jones shipped about 140,000 doses of potassium iodide, which blocks the thyroid from absorbing radiation and ultimately help thwart cancer in a nuclear event. Jones further said a typical week of shipments without President Trump stoking atomic war runs about 8,400 doses to private individuals. In other words, Trump increased Jones' sales by over 16x last week. Jones notes the sales figures do not include government agencies, hospitals, and universities.

To confirm this trend, Alan Morris, president of the Virginia-based pharmaceutical firm Anbex Inc, which specializes in radiation protection, said he’d seen an increase in demand, too.

“We are a wonderful barometer of the level of anxiety in the country,” said Morris.

Morris appears to be right: the search term “nuclear war” and “trump nuclear war” have surged since Trump entered office.

Jones warns that the escalating war of words between the U.S. and North Korea has contributed to widespread fear across the country. Although Jones says some of his buyers are “preppers,” many new buyers today are regular families seeking protection from nuclear war.

Such concerns were on displayed last week, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that it would conduct an unprecedented briefing on January 16 concerning the “public health response to a nuclear detonation” over the skies of the United States.

While a nuclear detonation is unlikely, it would have devastating results and there would be limited time to take critical protection steps. Despite the fear surrounding such an event, planning and preparation can lessen deaths and illness. For instance, most people don’t realize that sheltering in place for at least 24 hours is crucial to saving lives and reducing exposure to radiation. While federal, state, and local agencies will lead the immediate response efforts, public health will play a key role in responding. Join us for this session of Grand Rounds to learn what public health programs have done on a federal, state, and local level to prepare for a nuclear detonation. Learn how planning and preparation efforts for a nuclear detonation are similar and different from other emergency response planning efforts.

Back in 2011, Jones saw a massive surge in demand for potassium iodide following the meltdown of the Fukushima nuclear reactor. With minimal known radiation threats today, sales are once more exploding on the back of mass hysteria of nuclear war from President Trump’s Twitter account.

“I now follow his Twitter feed just to gauge the day’s sales and determine how much to stock and how many radiation emergency kits to prep for the coming week,” Jones said, adding: “I don’t think he intended to have this kind of effect.”

Nevertheless, President Trump has managed to make the potassium iodide industry and the world of preppers great again.

8.02 days for I-131, but you're in the ballpark. The iodized salt is far too dilute to have an effect; you would need to eat 2 tons of salt to get the required adult iodine dose for thyroid protection - just stay indoors.

I have decided to sell anti-radiation kits......A large Black or white plastic Bag, (not to be racist) to put over your head, and a number of zip ties of various lengths to pull it tight around your neck......after a few minutes, no Radiation problem.....$19.95.......

Oh wait! I can market that Kit to Congress,,,,"In case of pressure build up, use ASAP" ...I'll call it the Feinstein Device.!

Couple items those at that site are dosed smaller, the ones from Amazon are new and have expiration dates from the FDA on them, this is the same DOD and FEMA use. This last XMAS I put these in XMAS stockings for grown kids, I did prepper stockings, water straw, iosat..few other items.. But I also brought in 5 recent newer paks and gifted off the older though it still had 2 years.

You could google carefully water straws decide what is right for you and get these and do stockings. I do prime so the shipping was free. But I get pretty much all the lee loading, water filtration, and "some" other prepping items online. If you wait and set price change alerts you'll score on sale. I picked up the best Howard Leigh shooting ear noise cancelling sets for next to damn nothing.. Again bought two for xmas gifts in family have 4.

Potassium iodide will not be useful if a high altitude EMP burst is the nuclear event. A better use of money would be a case of vacuum packed peanuts for food, a water filter, vitamins, and a small firearm. Even better would be a plan out of Didnu territory to a country location.

It was damn helpful in Chernobyl and Fukushima, if an EMP or even a solar flare knocked out grid there could be cooling systems failure. And there is simply two groups of people: those prepared and those not. If you read the actual instructions you can take the pills for up to 10 days, but what is critical is timing as they are "blockers." But to buy the tablets and pay less than $2 USA a year for the prep??

That's your call. I'd skip a fucking starbucks and have the stuff prepped, as the kids get older and now off to college I sent a tab with each of them along with a lifestraw.. The stuffs cheap.

It only protects your thyroid and when we had a nuclear power plant issue, the towns were distributing about two days worth and you need a week or two.

And it was winter time and people stood in line for well over two hours.

You can buy them at Amazon and other places on line and they are rather inexpensive pills but again they only protect your thyroid. And they have a limited shelf life of I believe 5 years so check the expiration date before you buy. And seek out those packaged in hermetically sealed heavy foil.

Or instead, drink a quart of ant-freese because that does you in more quickly than radiation. /s

Didn't read the article but anyone who believes that kim un dumbfuck is stupid enough to push a nuclear button against the United States with a weapon that may or may not be accurate within 1000 miles or even survive re-entry should buy their nuclear fallout medicine from me. I will bottle some skittles for them and they will be just fine after giving me a couple of grand for my chewable survive the end of the world medicine.

Somewhere some 1 out of 1000 person was a prepper in Fukushima, and when the water came and went, earthquake was said and done, and then the fallout hit.. maybe the one item that was useful and could be carried out was the pills. But here is the difference, the guy who had the pills had taken his within an hour, the others waited until they could be dispensed or days.

So if you spend $9 and you follow the date till 2024 you get 6 years protection, now assuming the pills are stored correctly.. 9?

These are one of those items that escapist gun and bag preppers don't understand, allot of preppers are fools and would spend lavishly on some firearm and forget to spend a dollar a year on something that might be critical.

Best prepper items are stuff you are rigged to use every day. need a piece of plastic, go downstairs and take it off the roll, midnight sandwich, click on the led lantern in the kitchen, water the flowers hit the rain barrel., trash bags, yup buy in bulk, duct tape yup tons of it, food rotating bulk shelves., got a Gal she cooks with her freeze dried food at least once a week, and i can't always tell. Live the prepper life and surprises won't be a big surprise.

TL;DR - A topical Iodine solution like Povidone-Iodine or Lugol's Solution can be used in lieu of internal ingestion of Potassium-Iodide tablets. Do a search for "Potassium-Iodide Alternatives" to determine how much to use.

More Info: I used to work in a radiation survey instrument calibration lab with no less than 5 individual Cs-137 sources. (Anyone involved with this industry probably knows exactly what lab I'm referring to.) Each of those nasty Cs-137 sources, about the size of a pencil eraser and heavily shielded with DU and lead, were over 40 years old and still _quite_ lethal. I had every reason to be paranoid about radionuclides then, and I still maintain my counter-measures today ... I live uncomfortably close to a NPP.

This doesn't mean I expect the nearby nuke plant to start spewing miasma nor does it mean I expect Trump and Kim Jong Un to take their pissing contest to the next level. I am simply prepared for most N.B.C. emergencies and like sharing my gained knowledge with those who are interested.

The whole idea is to "load-up" your system with fresh iodine to prevent any uptake of radioactive iodine.

The "ThyroSafe" brand of KI is pretty much standard in the US now. The old KI tablets will still work fine, but they may cause a bit more stomach upset.